Although the elimination of SATs or other standardized tests during the Pandemic Era (or giving students the option of submitting them) was justified by various excuses about viruses and so on, in most cases the real reason was to create equity. Especially when it became clear that the Supreme Court would declare race-based admission illegal, colleges eliminated standardized tests as a way to achieve racial equity, assuming that the lower average scores of minorities would translate into lower admissions. And yet several studies have shown that standardized tests are the best predictor of college grades (“success”).
But it didn’t quite work that way. At least under the “test optional” criterion, a study by Dartmouth College showed that the “optional” criterion used by many schools had the effect of harming admissions prospects of lower-income students, since they often thought, mistakenly, that their test scores would hurt them. Here’s a bit from a NYT article by David Leonhardt that I wrote about in February:
Last summer, Sian Beilock — a cognitive scientist who had previously run Barnard College in New York — became the president of Dartmouth. After arriving, she asked a few Dartmouth professors to do an internal study on standardized tests. Like many other colleges during the Covid pandemic, Dartmouth dropped its requirement that applicants submit an SAT or ACT score. [JAC: Four-part ACTs are alternatives to SATs.] With the pandemic over and students again able to take the tests, Dartmouth’s admissions team was thinking about reinstating the requirement. Beilock wanted to know what the evidence showed.
“Our business is looking at data and research and understanding the implications it has,” she told me.
Three Dartmouth economists and a sociologist then dug into the numbers. One of their main findings did not surprise them: Test scores were a better predictor than high school grades — or student essays and teacher recommendations — of how well students would fare at Dartmouth. The evidence of this relationship is large and growing, as I explained in a recent Times article.
A second finding was more surprising. During the pandemic, Dartmouth switched to a test-optional policy, in which applicants could choose whether to submit their SAT and ACT scores. And this policy was harming lower-income applicants in a specific way.
The researchers were able to analyze the test scores even of students who had not submitted them to Dartmouth. (Colleges can see the scores after the admissions process is finished.) Many lower-income students, it turned out, had made a strategic mistake.
They withheld test scores that would have helped them get into Dartmouth. They wrongly believed that their scores were too low, when in truth the admissions office would have judged the scores to be a sign that students had overcome a difficult environment and could thrive at Dartmouth.
After this study, Dartmouth reinstated the SAT test as a mandatory requirement for applicants,
Now Harvard University (which as students we called “Schmarvard”), has also reinstated mandatory standardized tests as part of the admissions process. Click to read:
This is from the April 11 Harvard Magazine:
Harvard announced today that the College will reinstitute mandatory submission of standardized test scores for applicants, beginning with students applying for fall 2025 admission (the class of 2029). Until today’s decision, the College had a test-optional policy in place for applicants through the class of 2030. The announcement follows similar decisions by Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown to require standardized testing beginning with the class of 2029.
Test-optional policies were widely adopted during the pandemic, when it was difficult to sit for standardized tests, and many remained in place even as the threat of illness faded. The tests were thought to disadvantage lower-income students and those from under-resourced high schools. But a working paper coauthored in 2023 by Ackman professor of public economics Raj Chetty, Black professor of political economy and professor of education and economics David Deming, and John Friedman, a professor of economics at Brown, found standardized tests are a useful means of identifying promising students at less well-resourced high schools. In a statement, Chetty said “Critics correctly note that standardized tests are not an unbiased measure of students’ qualifications, as students from higher-income families often have greater access to test prep and other resources. But the data reveal that other measures—recommendation letters, extracurriculars, essays—are even more prone to such biases. Considering standardized test scores is likely to make the admissions process at Harvard more meritocratic while increasing socioeconomic diversity.”
As previously reported, MIT, which reinstituted a testing requirement last year—citing SAT math scores as measures of an applicant’s ability to handle a highly quantitative curriculum—recently reported enrolling its most diverse class. (In late March, Emi Nietfeld’15 hadargued in favor of mandatory standardized testing from the perspective of a disadvantaged applicant in this New York Times essay, “How the SAT Changed My Life.”)
In today’s announcement, Harvard said it will require submission of SAT or ACT scores, but that other eligible tests, such as AP exams and International Baccalaureate scores, will be accepted in exceptional cases.
The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science parroted the Dartmouth finding:
“Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond” said Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi Hoekstra in an email to students and colleagues. “Indeed, when students have the option of not submitting their test scores, they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application. In short,” she continued, “more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range.”
It’s about time. And notice that what’s mentioned is “across the socioeconomic range” rather than “across the ethnic range.” I don’t know if “socioeconomic” is the new code word for “race,” but the mandatory submission of test scores can only be a good thing. How can it hurt? It’s a way of identifying talent that isn’t revealed by high-school grades or where someone went to high school, and if a college wants to admit students on the basis of either merit or likelihood of success (they’re correlated), the make the tests obligatory.
I am torn. On the one hand, I want to applaud the schools for seeing the light of reason and reinstating the SAT scores.
On the other hand, I would love to hit them with every possible accusation of racism and bigotry for reintroducing the test in order to make them feel more pain about putting ideology over merit.
That’s because I have the sneaking suspicion, that they haven’t felt enough pain to come to the realization that this particular ideology is hurting academia at large.
Well, who’d a thunk it? We have known for a long time that test scores predict success, and are the best way of finding the pearls amongst the dust, thus enabling admission of those who will benefit even if they don’t come from the ‘right’ background. Experiments in social justice are not necessarily beneficial, but the outcome of this one was entirely predictable.
Requiring test scores again is a good thing, but swinging back to the earlier standard doesn’t make colleges and universities look much better. After all, the change of direction doesn’t nullify what they did before. The reason colleges and universities eliminated test scores is precisely because test scores enable comparisons among applicants along known measures of academic success. They wanted to make such comparisons impossible.